Slicing is the best way to go about that.

test_string = 'This is a test!'
print (test_string [1:-1])
Answer from bashBedlam on Stack Overflow
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/learnpython › how do you remove the first and last character from a string?
r/learnpython on Reddit: How do you remove the first and last character from a string?
March 25, 2021 -

I'm wanting to be able to use something like "<test>" as a function parameter and get "test" back out. So far I have:

def shorten(word):
    new_word = word[1, -1]
    print(new_word)

It keeps throwing an error saying "string indices must be integers".

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Medium
medium.com › @pythonchallengers › python-challenge-unveiled-3-exceptional-approaches-to-solve-it-55c0de213f60
Python Challenge: Removes first and last characteres | by Python Challengers | Medium
December 6, 2023 - It uses the del statement to remove elements from the result list. The del result[0] statement removes the first element (index 0) from the list, and del result[-1] removes the last element from the list.
Discussions

python 3.x - how to remove first and last letter from string - Stack Overflow
heres the question: Remove First and Last Character It's pretty straightforward. Your goal is to create a function that removes the first and last characters of a string. You're given one parameter... More on stackoverflow.com
🌐 stackoverflow.com
python - How to remove the first and last letter of a string? - Stack Overflow
But sadly if the first letter is ... 'c' from the string. Same goes with the last letter. ... Then I don't see the problem; that is the result I get when I run this. ... @ScottHunter - "ccaxcc".strip("c") would return "ax", removing more than just the first and last letters ... @Sayse: But OP said the posted code "deletes every single" of some character from the string, ... More on stackoverflow.com
🌐 stackoverflow.com
Trim last two characters of a String - Oracle Forums
Hi, I have a task to trim the last two characters of a string in a column and get the rest as output for comparison purpose. the length of column value is not fixed. For example I/p O/p India_1 Indi... More on forums.oracle.com
🌐 forums.oracle.com
December 6, 2010
How do you remove the first and last character from a string?
new_word = word[1:-1] More on reddit.com
🌐 r/learnpython
4
2
March 25, 2021
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GeeksforGeeks
geeksforgeeks.org › dsa › remove-first-and-last-characters
Remove first and last characters - GeeksforGeeks
July 4, 2026 - The substring starts from index 1 and has length strlen(s) - 2. ... C++ provides the substr() function of the string class to extract a substring. We can directly use s.substr(1, s.length() - 2) to remove the first and last characters. ... Python ...
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PyTaster
pytaster.com › remove-the-first-and-last-character-of-a-python-string
Remove First and Last Character from Python String | PyTaster
July 4, 2025 - Because the strip() method removes all trailing and leading characters that are specified, we should not use it to remove the first and last character of a string unless we are sure that there are no repeated characters at the start or end of ...
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Codecademy
codecademy.com › article › remove-characters-from-a-python-string
How to Remove Characters from a String in Python | Codecademy
Sometimes we need to remove the last character from a string in Python, especially when dealing with trailing commas, newline characters, or formatting issues. Here are two common methods for performing this operation: ... Let’s go through these methods one by one. String slicing is a useful feature in Python that enables us to extract a portion of a string using index positions.
Find elsewhere
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DataCamp
datacamp.com › tutorial › python-trim
How to Trim a String in Python: Three Different Methods | DataCamp
February 16, 2025 - Python provides built-in methods to trim strings, making it straightforward to clean and preprocess textual data. These methods include · .strip(): Removes leading and trailing characters (whitespace by default).
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GeeksforGeeks
geeksforgeeks.org › python › python-program-to-remove-last-character-from-the-string
Python program to Remove Last character from the string - GeeksforGeeks
July 11, 2025 - Python offers several simple ways to remove last character from string, let's explore it one by one: List slicing is a quick way to remove the last character from a string. Using the notation string[:-1], it returns a new string that includes ...
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DigitalOcean
digitalocean.com › community › tutorials › python-remove-character-from-string
How to Remove Characters from a String in Python | DigitalOcean
Remove characters from a Python string with replace(), translate(), re.sub(), and slicing. Compare methods, see examples, and pick the right approach.
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Wordpress
viewsby.wordpress.com › 2015 › 01 › 28 › python-remove-first-and-last-character
Python – remove first and last character | Sany's Linux and Open Source Blog
January 28, 2015 - By using slicing technique we can remove first ans last character from a string. Observe following example for more details: >>> input = "abcd" >>> input[1:-1] Output: 'bc' In above example I removed a and d from input string ('abcd') with ...
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Medium
medium.com › @Alexander_H › removing-characters-before-after-and-in-the-middle-of-strings-fb4930cce76a
Removing characters before, after, and in the middle of strings | by This Time Is Different | Medium
October 30, 2017 - This time is easier because there is always a space between the first and last name. Because .split() removes the character that’s being passed, that means we’ll be left with just the first and last names, no spaces. From there we just want the first item, at index position 0.
Author: Manish-Giri
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w3resource
w3resource.com › python-exercises › basic › python-basic-1-exercise-123.php
Python: Remove the first and last elements from a given string - w3resource
Write a Python program to remove the first and last elements from a given string. ... # Define a function 'test' that removes the first and last characters from a string. def test(input_str): # Return the original string if its length is less than 3, otherwise return the string excluding the ...
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Codewars
codewars.com › kata › 570597e258b58f6edc00230d › discuss
Discuss Remove First and Last Character Part Two | Codewars
This is a spin off of my first kata. You are given a string containing a sequence of character sequences separated by commas. Write a function which returns a new string containing the same cha...
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W3Schools
w3schools.com › python › ref_string_strip.asp
Python String strip() Method
The strip() method removes any leading, and trailing whitespaces. Leading means at the beginning of the string, trailing means at the end. You can specify which character(s) to remove, if not, any whitespaces will be removed.
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Plain English
plainenglish.io › home › blog › python › 5 ways you can remove the last character from a string in python
5 Ways You Can Remove the Last Character from a String in Python
June 2, 2021 - On line number 3, we have used a negative index for removing the last character from a string which is [:-1] because n is present in the last index. On line number 4, we have to print the rest string. Just like negative indexing we can also use positive indexing to remove the first element from the string. Let’s take a look at the example for a better understanding. ... str1 = "This is python" print ("original string is:", str1) length= len (str1) str2 = str1[ :length-1] print ("after removing the last character, the string is:", str2)
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W3Schools
w3schools.com › python › python_strings.asp
Python Strings
However, Python does not have a character data type, a single character is simply a string with a length of 1. Square brackets can be used to access elements of the string. Get the character at position 1 (remember that the first character has the position 0):
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Oracle
forums.oracle.com › ords › apexds › post › trim-last-two-characters-of-a-string-9235
Trim last two characters of a String - Oracle Forums
December 6, 2010 - Hi, I have a task to trim the last two characters of a string in a column and get the rest as output for comparison purpose. the length of column value is not fixed. For example I/p O/p India_1 Indi...
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TutorialsPoint
tutorialspoint.com › article › how-to-remove-the-first-and-last-character-in-a-string-in-r
How to remove the first and last character in a string in R?
February 9, 2021 - Python TechnologiesDatabasesComputer ... Categories ... To remove the first and last character in a string, we can use str_sub function of stringr package....